Combinatorics: the Art of Counting
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GRADUATE STUDIES IN MATHEMATICS 210 Combinatorics: The Art of Counting Bruce E. Sagan Combinatorics: The Art of Counting GRADUATE STUDIES IN MATHEMATICS 210 Combinatorics: The Art of Counting Bruce E. Sagan Marco Gualtieri Bjorn Poonen Gigliola Staffilani (Chair) Jeff A. Viaclovsky 2020 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 05-01; Secondary 06-01. For additional information and updates on this book, visit www.ams.org/bookpages/gsm-210 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sagan, Bruce Eli, 1954- author. Title: Combinatorics : the art of counting / Bruce E. Sagan. Description: Providence, Rhode Island : American Mathematical Society, [2020] | Series: Gradu- ate studies in mathematics, 1065-7339 ; 210 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020025345 | ISBN 9781470460327 (paperback) | ISBN 9781470462802 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Combinatorial analysis–Textbooks. | AMS: Combinatorics – Instructional ex- position (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.). | Order, lattices, ordered algebraic structures – Instructional exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.). Classification: LCC QA164 .S24 2020 | DDC 511/.6–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025345 Copying and reprinting. Individual readers of this publication, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to make fair use of the material, such as to copy select pages for use in teaching or research. Permission is granted to quote brief passages from this publication in reviews, provided the customary acknowledgment of the source is given. Republication, systematic copying, or multiple reproduction of any material in this publication is permitted only under license from the American Mathematical Society. Requests for permission to reuse portions of AMS publication content are handled by the Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please visit www.ams.org/publications/pubpermissions. Send requests for translation rights and licensed reprints to [email protected]. c 2020 by the American Mathematical Society. All rights reserved. The American Mathematical Society retains all rights except those granted to the United States Government. Printed in the United States of America. ∞ The paper used in this book is acid-free and falls within the guidelines established to ensure permanence and durability. Visit the AMS home page at https://www.ams.org/ 10987654321 252423222120 To Sally, for her love and support Contents Preface xi List of Notation xiii Chapter 1. Basic Counting 1 §1.1. The Sum and Product Rules for sets 1 §1.2. Permutations and words 4 §1.3. Combinations and subsets 5 §1.4. Set partitions 10 §1.5. Permutations by cycle structure 11 §1.6. Integer partitions 13 §1.7. Compositions 16 §1.8. The twelvefold way 17 §1.9. Graphs and digraphs 18 §1.10. Trees 22 §1.11. Lattice paths 25 §1.12. Pattern avoidance 28 Exercises 33 Chapter 2. Counting with Signs 41 §2.1. The Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion 41 §2.2. Sign-reversing involutions 44 §2.3. The Garsia–Milne Involution Principle 49 §2.4. The Reflection Principle 52 vii viii Contents §2.5. The Lindström–Gessel–Viennot Lemma 55 §2.6. The Matrix-Tree Theorem 59 Exercises 64 Chapter 3. Counting with Ordinary Generating Functions 71 §3.1. Generating polynomials 71 §3.2. Statistics and 푞-analogues 74 §3.3. The algebra of formal power series 81 §3.4. The Sum and Product Rules for ogfs 86 §3.5. Revisiting integer partitions 89 §3.6. Recurrence relations and generating functions 92 §3.7. Rational generating functions and linear recursions 96 §3.8. Chromatic polynomials 99 §3.9. Combinatorial reciprocity 106 Exercises 109 Chapter 4. Counting with Exponential Generating Functions 117 §4.1. First examples 117 §4.2. Generating functions for Eulerian polynomials 121 §4.3. Labeled structures 124 §4.4. The Sum and Product Rules for egfs 128 §4.5. The Exponential Formula 131 Exercises 134 Chapter 5. Counting with Partially Ordered Sets 139 §5.1. Basic properties of partially ordered sets 139 §5.2. Chains, antichains, and operations on posets 145 §5.3. Lattices 148 §5.4. The Möbius function of a poset 154 §5.5. The Möbius Inversion Theorem 157 §5.6. Characteristic polynomials 164 §5.7. Quotients of posets 168 §5.8. Computing the Möbius function 174 §5.9. Binomial posets 178 Exercises 183 Chapter 6. Counting with Group Actions 189 §6.1. Groups acting on sets 189 §6.2. Burnside’s Lemma 192 §6.3. The cycle index 197 Contents ix §6.4. Redfield–Pólya theory 200 §6.5. An application to proving congruences 205 §6.6. The cyclic sieving phenomenon 209 Exercises 213 Chapter 7. Counting with Symmetric Functions 219 §7.1. The algebra of symmetric functions, Sym 219 §7.2. The Schur basis of Sym 224 §7.3. Hooklengths 230 §7.4. 푃-partitions 235 §7.5. The Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence 240 §7.6. Longest increasing and decreasing subsequences 244 §7.7. Differential posets 248 §7.8. The chromatic symmetric function 253 §7.9. Cyclic sieving redux 256 Exercises 259 Chapter 8. Counting with Quasisymmetric Functions 267 §8.1. The algebra of quasisymmetric functions, QSym 267 §8.2. Reverse 푃-partitions 270 §8.3. Chain enumeration in posets 274 §8.4. Pattern avoidance and quasisymmetric functions 276 §8.5. The chromatic quasisymmetric function 279 Exercises 283 Appendix. Introduction to Representation Theory 287 §A.1. Basic notions 287 Exercises 292 Bibliography 293 Index 297 Preface Enumerative combinatorics has seen an explosive growth over the last 50 years. The purpose of this text is to give a gentle introduction to this exciting area of research. So, rather than trying to cover many different topics, I have chosen to give a more leisurely treatment of some of the highlights of the field. My goal has been to write the exposition so it could be read by a student at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level, either as part of a course or for independent study. The reader will find it similar in tone to my book on the symmetric group. I have tried to keep the prerequisites to a minimum, assuming only basic courses in linear and abstract algebra as background. Certain recurring themes are emphasized, for example, the existence of sum and prod- uct rules first for sets, then for ordinary generating functions, and finally inthecaseof exponential generating functions. I have also included some recent material from the research literature which, to my knowledge, has not appeared in book form previously, such as the theory of quotient posets and the connection between pattern avoidance and quasisymmetric functions. Most of the exercises should be doable with a reasonable amount of effort. A few unsolved conjectures have been included among the problems in the hope that an in- terested student might wish to tackle one of them. They are, of course, marked as such. A few words about the title are in order. It is in part meant to be a tip of the hat to Donald Knuth’s influential series of books The art of computer programing, Volumes 1–3 [51–53], which, among many other things, helped give birth to the study of pattern avoidance through its connection with stack sorting; see Exercise 36 in Chapter 1. I hope that the title also conveys some of the beauty found in this area of mathemat- ics, for example, the elegance of the Hook Formula (equation (7.10)) for the number of standard Young tableaux. In addition I should mention that, due to my own pref- erences, this book concentrates on the enumerative side of combinatorics and mostly ignores the important extremal and existential parts of the field. The reader interested in these areas can consult the books of Flajolet and Sedgewick [25] and of van Lint [95]. xi xii Preface This book grew out of the lecture notes which I have compiled over years of teach- ing the graduate combinatorics course at Michigan State University. I would like to thank the students in these classes for all the feedback they have given me about the various topics and their presentation. I am also indebted to the following colleagues, some of whom taught from a preliminary version of this book, who provided me with suggestions as well as catching numerous typographical errors: Matthias Beck, Moussa Benoumhani, Andreas Blass, Seth Chaiken, Sylvie Corteel, Georges Grekos, Richard Hensh, Nadia Lafrenière, Duncan Levear, and Tom Zaslavsky. Darij Grinberg deserves special mention for providing copious comments and corrections as well as providing a number of interesting exercises. I also received valuable feedback from four anony- mous referees. Finally, I wish to express my appreciation of Ina Mette, my editor at the American Mathematical Society. Without her gentle support and persistence, this text would never have seen the light of day. Because I typeset this document myself, all errors can be blamed on my computer. East Lansing, Michigan, 2020 List of Notation Symbol Definition Page 퐴(퐷) arc set of digraph 퐷 21 퐴(퐺) adjacency matrix of graph 퐺 60 풜(퐺) set of acyclic orientations of 퐺 103 푎(퐺) number of acyclic orientations of 퐺 103 퐴([푛], 푘) set of permutations 휋 in 픖푛 having 푘 descents 121 퐴(푛, 푘) Eulerian number, cardinality of 퐴([푛], 푘) 121 퐴푛(푞) Eulerian polynomial 122 풜(푃) atom set of poset 푃 169 Asc 푐 ascent set of a proper coloring 푐 279 asc 푐 ascent number of a proper coloring 푐 279 Asc 휋 ascent set of permutation 휋 76 asc 휋 ascent number of permutation 휋 76 Av푛(휋) the set of permutations in 픖푛 avoiding 휋 29 훼푟 reversal of composition 훼 32 ̄훼 expansion of composition 훼 274 훼(퐶) rank composition of chain 퐶 275 퐵(퐺) incidence matrix